Every month, the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index peers into the heads of the nation's developers for their insights into building conditions.

A survey constructs a NAHB/Wells confidence index on a scale from 1 to 100, where the high numbers are perfection; 50 is the break between good and bad; and well ... a year ago the national index was at 21. In the West, 2011 ended at 16.

Fast forward to the final 2012 reading, and we see the national NAHB/Wells index at 48 – the highest mark since April 2006. In the West, December's score was 45 – and while that's down 3 points in a month, November tied October for highest since July 2006.

Considering the size of the economic effort that goes into building housing – and assuming the uptick in developer psyche translates to action – this is an uplifting trend.

MINUS: Still, what's up with late mortgage payments, just when you thought it was "all clear"?

November's S&P/Experian Consumer Credit Default Index – an attempt to track national bill-paying patterns – shows rising defaults. In September, the index hit a post-recession low of 1.46 percent, then ticked up to 1.55 percent in October and 1.64 percent in November. (Note: In November 2011, the default rate was 2.21 percent!)

The sole reason is that the default rate for first mortgages jumped from 1.36 percent in September to 1.58 percent in November. All other loans tracked – auto, bank card and second mortgages – showed improvement.

In the Los Angeles area, the overall default rate was 1.6 percent vs. 1.44 percent in October. Let's not forget, this same tardy bill-paying measure was at 2.53 percent in November 2011.

The year's improvement is clear, as is the worry about the recent reversal.

Half of those surveyed said the U.S. economy is on the wrong track. But that's down from 75 percent a year earlier. It's definitely a mixed picture: 18 percent of people polled expect their personal financial situation to get worse over the next 12 months – the highest since December 2011. At the same time, 21 percent said their household income had jumped significantly higher in a year.

As for housing, 37 percent see prices up in a year, while 14 percent foresee depreciation.

Doug Duncan of Fannie Mae thinks that "growing confidence in a housing recovery, in addition to other factors, may reinforce growing consumer optimism regarding the improving direction of the general economy."

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